What If?

What if President Donald J. Trump is only the unwitting showmanship tool of a diabolical would-be autocracy?  (See Thomas Edsall’s essay in the 9/2/2025 NYT.)   Edsall names the Svengalis behind Trump’s  would-be throne: Russell Vought and Stephen Miller.   Vought and Miller, according  Edsall, “are coldblooded, ideologically driven strategists who have spent nearly a decade developing the foundations for this MAGA takeover of what was once a familiar American way of life.” 

Throughout his career Trump has been the benighted heir to a giant real estate fortune who has repeatedly fooled bankers, other investors, and electoral majorities into backing his personal ventures in other fields. But his ability repeatedly to garner such  support has been too tempting for right-wing political  schemers to ignore.   Their goal is to distort the Constitutional trappings of America’s liberal democracy into a formula for legitimizing autocratic rule and depriving average citizens of their equitable rights.

This danger has increasingly been recognized by alarmed members of  both Parties.  However, they are all such true believers in the mythological foresight of the creators of the Union that they are easily manipulated by determined masterminds armed with a popular, narcissistic, and pliant demagogue.

Solving this predicament requires youthful leadership, experienced in defining and defending liberal democratic values, as well as appealing to stay-at-home audiences.  A television or radio  personality might fit the bill; after all Ronald Reagan, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and others have succeeded in making that shift in roles.  Of course, that kind of presidential candidate would have to be backed up with a circle of government policy professionals.  Nevertheless, owing to the country’s recent record of incompetent cabinet secretaries, it is not unreasonable to expect that such a presidential ticket would be welcomed by an electoral majority.